Comment is free + Health | The Guardianhttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/commentisfree+katine/health
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Coal seam gas, or clean drinking water. It can’t be both | Michael Moorehttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/21/coal-seam-gas-or-clean-drinking-water-it-cant-be-both
<p>It’s vital the community’s long-term need for drinking water is placed before the short-term profits of the mining companies</p><p> There are few things more fundamental to our health and wellbeing than access to clean air and water. <br /> <br /> Australia is lucky enough to have some of the highest quality drinking water in the world, due in no small part to the protection of our drinking water catchments. NSW governments from both sides of politics have prioritised the security of the special areas of Sydney’s drinking water catchments, where water collects for use by our cities and towns. These special areas of bush and vegetation function like a buffer and filter that stop contaminants and pollution before they can make their way into our drinking water.<br /> <br /> That is, until now.</p><p>With the release of the chief scientist’s Independent Coal Seam Gas Review report, the moratorium on coal seam gas production in the special areas is <a href="http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/csg-work-banned-from-water-catchment-areas http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/csg-work-banned-from-water-catchment-areas">set to be lifted</a>.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/21/coal-seam-gas-or-clean-drinking-water-it-cant-be-both">Continue reading...</a>WaterEnvironmentNew South WalesHealthAustralia newsMon, 20 Oct 2014 22:43:03 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/21/coal-seam-gas-or-clean-drinking-water-it-cant-be-bothPhotograph: Lucy Lambriex/Getty Images/Flickr RFThe need for drinking water should be placed before the short-term profits.Photograph: Lucy Lambriex/Getty Images/Flickr RFThe need for drinking water should be placed before the short-term profits.Michael Moore2014-10-20T22:43:03ZOf course homeopathy doesn't work – but patients don't want to hear it | Ranjana Srivastavahttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/11/of-course-homeopathy-doesnt-work-but-some-dont-want-to-hear-it
<p>The medical establishment dismisses homeopathy, but many people are willing to defend it – often because they finally feel heard by alternative medicine practitioners </p><p><br /> All my children were resolutely bald for the first two years of their life. I didn’t mind, but the concern of a woman at playgroup made up for my lack of it.</p><p>Convinced that baldness signified a &quot;bodily imbalance&quot;, she exhorted me to seek homeopathic treatment. I was recommended a practitioner who had successfully treated the woman’s own children for asthma, colic and school-related stress. All her treatments were natural, safe, guaranteed to work, and relatively cheap at $40 apiece. My poor daughter, routinely mistaken for a boy, would soon flaunt Rapunzel-like hair. And what more, my private health insurance would cover her transformation. </p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/11/of-course-homeopathy-doesnt-work-but-some-dont-want-to-hear-it">Continue reading...</a>MedicineHealthAustralia newsFri, 11 Apr 2014 07:01:54 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/11/of-course-homeopathy-doesnt-work-but-some-dont-want-to-hear-itPhotograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty ImagesHomeopathic remedies. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty ImagesPhotograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty ImagesHomeopathic remedies. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty ImagesRanjana Srivastava2014-04-11T07:01:54ZHow a brutal bicycle accident led me to discover slow motion Sydney | Douglas Kahnhttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/17/how-a-brutal-bicycle-accident-led-me-to-discover-slow-motion-sydney
<p>After I was hit by a car, I had to shuffle in my own city at a dramatically reduced pace. The experience has been both&nbsp;excruciating&nbsp;and wonderful&nbsp;</p><p>As a historian I have always known how valuable travellers' journals can be in providing a more complete record of places in the past. It just makes sense that people who live in a place are not necessarily sensitive to what surrounds them, to the things large and small that stand between them and what they're doing, whereas a visitor will see things with fresh eyes, will pause and pay attention.&nbsp;</p><p>I was cycling along my routine route, the one I followed a couple times a week for exercise. Cycling is good for someone like me who spends so much time reading and writing. The driver who hit me did not know I was a historian and I had no idea that, once I was able to walk again, I would enter a different city. A city within a city: slow motion Sydney.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/17/how-a-brutal-bicycle-accident-led-me-to-discover-slow-motion-sydney">Continue reading...</a>SydneyAustralia newsHealthCyclingFri, 17 Jan 2014 01:06:30 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/17/how-a-brutal-bicycle-accident-led-me-to-discover-slow-motion-sydneyPhotograph: flickr'Many months later, I still am not back on the bike'. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rubygoes/10635073665/">Photograph: flickr</a>Photograph: flickr'Many months later, I still am not back on the bike'. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rubygoes/10635073665/">Photograph: flickr</a>Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesCycling signs in Sydney. Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesPhotograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesCycling signs in Sydney. Photograph: Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesDouglas Kahn2014-01-17T01:06:30ZOne HIV test, but two results | Elizabeth Pisanihttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/feb/22/the-drugs-wont-work
The realities of HIV depend on geography. We can't treat our way out of this epidemic<p>It's been a bad few months for HIV prevention. We've learned that our <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/14/anti-hiv-gel-trial-failure" title="">best candidates for vaccines and virus-killing microbicides don't work</a>. Now we're &shy;clutching at another straw: <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/21/blanket-testing-hiv-aids" title="">maybe we can treat our way out of the HIV epidemic</a>.</p><p>At an HIV research meeting this week, boffins from the World Health Organisation revived a mathematical model that shows that if we test everyone in Africa for HIV once a year and give everyone who tests positive expensive drugs right away and for the rest of their lives, we'll wipe out new HIV infections within seven years. That's because HIV is passed on most easily when there's lots of virus in the infected person's blood and body fluids. Antiretroviral medicines cut the &quot;viral load&quot; (the amount of virus in the body), so they make it more difficult to pass on HIV. Ergo, more treatment means fewer new infections.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/feb/22/the-drugs-wont-work">Continue reading...</a>World newsLife and styleSexual healthSocietyWorld Health OrganisationAustralia newsUS newsAid and developmentKatineHealthAsia PacificMon, 22 Feb 2010 21:30:02 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/feb/22/the-drugs-wont-workElizabeth Pisani2010-02-22T21:30:02ZKeep maternal mortality on the agenda | Madeleine Buntinghttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/sep/23/maternal-mortality-un
UN attention and financial pledges are welcome, but in Africa the roots of the problem are deep and depressing<p>Sarah Brown's commitment has been admirable. Here was a neglected, unfashionable cause: maternal mortality, the <a href="http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/bkgd.shtml" title="UN: Millennium Development Goals">millennium development goal</a> that looked like it was going to slip under the radar. Fifth in the list of eight targets pledged by the members of the UN as a commitment to reach by 2015, progress has always been slow and now it is lamentably off track.</p><p>So it is largely due to Brown's persistent <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/15/sarah-brown-maternal-care-children" title="Cif: Save mothers – and you will save the world">championing of this cause</a> that the issue has arrived so prominently on the <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp" title="UN: Secretary-General's Report to the United Nations">UN summit agenda</a> today, and that <a href="http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/health/news/article_1502783.php/World-Bank-and-Britain-to-launch-billion-dollar-free-health-plan" title="Monsters and Critics: World Bank and Britain to launch billion-dollar free health plan">&pound;3.2bn has been pledged to expand healthcare for women and children</a>.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/sep/23/maternal-mortality-un">Continue reading...</a>WomenGenderSocietyWorld newsUnited NationsHealthKatineLife and styleChildbirthMaternal healthGlobal developmentMaternal mortalityMidwiferyWed, 23 Sep 2009 16:30:38 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/sep/23/maternal-mortality-unMadeleine Bunting2009-09-23T16:30:38ZKevin Watkins: Save the mothershttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/apr/07/pop-stars-adoption-africa
Pop stars trying to adopt orphans obscures a tragic reality - Africa's huge maternal death toll<p>Mariam Ali, 17, was already in a coma when she arrived in the back of a truck at the General Reference hospital in N'Djamena, the capital of Chad. Eight months pregnant, she had been experiencing fits brought on by high blood pressure. It had taken her mother three days to get her from their rural village 80km away to the hospital - but it was too late. Mariam died a few days later, along with her baby.</p><p>&quot;She died for want of some simple drugs and a bit of ante-natal care,&quot; says Grace Kodindo, the doctor who tried to save her, adding: &quot;It would never have happened in Europe.&quot;</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/apr/07/pop-stars-adoption-africa">Continue reading...</a>World newsHealthMadonnaSocietyUK newsAid and developmentHealthGlobal developmentWomenPoliticsMon, 06 Apr 2009 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/apr/07/pop-stars-adoption-africaKevin Watkins2009-04-06T23:01:00Z